A Taxonomy of Amateur Astronomers
tfla...@my-dejanews.com
---------------------------------
Amateur astronomers can be divided into four categories: Space
Cadets, Peeping Toms, Star Huggers, and Wonks. Actually, all of us
probably fall into at least two of these categories, and many of us
fit all of them. How do I know? Because all four live inside me.
Space Cadets
------------
When I was a child, I was smart, bookish, unathletic, and weaker than
all of my clasmates. Or so it seemed at the time. Looking back on it
now, I suspect that I wasn't quite the wimp that I thought I was, but
it is the perception that counts. Perhaps all boys feel that way;
after all, all boys are weaker than their fathers.
Since there seemed to be no hope of my getting big and strong in the
immediate future, I took refuge in fantasies of potency. I loved all
things big and powerful, and what could be bigger or more powerful than
the vastness of the universe? In an earlier era, I might have dreamt
of sailing the high seas and conquering people with black or brown skins,
but I was a child of Sputnik, so I dreamt of conquering outer space.
Long before I became a man, I realized that science fiction is no more
a sober depiction of the future than sword-and-sorcery fantasy is a
sober depiction of the past. Conquest of the planets, if it happens
at all, will not be achieved by lone heroes riding on white chargers,
but by huge, faceless, industrial bureaucracies. Still, realistic
or not, outer space -- the ultimate escape -- remains tremendously
compelling. As soon as Galileo turned his telescope to the skies,
centuries before space flight became a reality, people dreamt of
treading on foreign worlds. Surely that is a large part of the reason
that the planets fascinate both novices and initiates; we see them, and
we imagine ourselves there.
Peeping Toms
------------
Technology is the obvious refuge of people who are smart, bookish, and
weak. Since I could not run or fight as well as my classmates, I used
to design guns, robots, space ships, and other things fast or strong.
However, my attempts to build these things got nowhere, for obvious
reasons. I would have been happy to buy them, but my parents would
have frowned on guns, and robots and space ships were conspicuously
absent from my catalogs.
But those who cannnot do can always look. I cultivated skills of
seeing and listening that continue to serve me well, even now when my
insecurities of potence are just a remote memory. And I lusted after
the technology of seeing, which unlike the technology of doing, was
well within my grasp: magnifying glasses, microscopes, cameras,
binoculars, and telescopes. I cannot posess the planets, the stars,
and the galaxies, but I can undress them with my eyes.
Is it just a coincidence, a huge joke of nature, or is it an unconscious
bias of their designers that makes telescopes so strikingly phallic?
Isn't this part of the esthetic appeal of refractors as opposed to more
functional designs like the short-focus truss-tube reflector on Mount
Palomar? No matter. Our eyes are our most powerful organs, and no
tool is more powerful than a telescope. Without noise, sweat, or
fuss, it brings the unreachable within our grasp.
Just as the smart and weak are drawn to the effortless, ethereal magic
of computers, so are we drawn to the magic of telescopes. But telescopes
are better than computers, because computers are doomed to be a world
apart; the world inside a computer is different in kind from the real
physical world. Telescopes, by contrast, connect us directly to the
great powers and forces of the universe.
Star Huggers
------------
At the opposite pole from the technocrat is the nature lover. Or is
it really opposite? The two are flip sides of the same coin. Before
the Industrial Revolution, there were no nature lovers; nature was
just there, unremarkable, taken for granted.
I had the good fortune to spend three quarters of my childhood in the
city and one quarter in the country. Unfortunately (from the point
of view of astronomy) that one quarter was the summer, and for most
of the summer, I went to bed before the stars came out. Even so,
I managed to catch some glimpses of the real night sky, the night
sky as it was meant to be, the night sky as it was seen by every
poet, famer, and city dweller before the invention of artificial
lighting. And one glimpse is enough to hook you.
It is not just modern romanticism that sees magic in the starry night.
That sight has been a mainstay of literature since the very beginning;
it is inherently wondrous. The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
The space cadet wants to conquer, to trample the stars underfoot.
We may not have done that, but we have done second best; we have
blotted them out with electric lights, so that they cannot taunt
us with their transcendance.
The star hugger wants to be conquered, to lie on his back under the
starry sky and abandon his soul, to merge with the universe.
Alas, the universe is not privy to the bargain. It goes on its way
without taking heed of us mortals. Stars are, in fact, huge balls of
fiery gas, and not especially huggable.
Wonks
-----
It is knowledge that squares the circle. Or, to use a more precise
metaphor, knowledge teaches us that a square and a circle are
incommensurable, but they can dance ever closer. Likewise, we
cannot conquer the stars, nor can we join with them in mystical
union, but we can dance with them through knowledge.
Learning comes in many different forms. The first steps are
identification, classification, and naming. We walk in the woods
and we identify a plant. Then we classify it; we say that it is
like some other plants nearby, or other plants that we have seen
before. Then, to fix the classification in our minds, as we fix
a photographic image on paper, we give it a name -- we call it
jewelweed. And by giving it a name, not only do we make it possible
to study it, we also make it possible to share our learning with
other people. It all sounds incredibly straightforward, but as
any botanist can tell you, it is anything but.
Until the telescope, and better, the spectroscope, were invented,
we were stuck classifying stars by their apparent locations and
brightness. Hence the vast amount of effort that the ancients
put into configuring and naming the constellations and the stars.
After classification come dissection and analysis; we want to find
out what things look like inside, and how they work. Astronomy is
unique among the sciences in the fact that its subjects cannot be
manipulated. If you want to find out how a cell works, you cut
it open, or put it into a different environment. Neither trick
is possible with a star. That is part of what makes astronomy
so uniquely attractive to an amateur. The manipulatory sciences
demand ever more powerful and expensive tools, like giant atom
smashers, which are completely out of the reach of amateurs. The
gap is smaller in astronomy. A variable-star observer with
binoculars can make valuable research contributions; a humble
8-inch SCT with a CCD camera is capable of original discoveries.
No matter how fancy their equipment, all amateurs are doomed to
acquire almost all of their knowledge through book-learning, not
through direct experience. Of course, this is true in all fields,
and it is true of professionals as well as amateurs. No individual
investigator, however skilled or lucky, can begin to match the
cumulative collective knowledge of humanity.
But I, for one, find book-learning in isolation to be a little
dry and sterile. I like to be able to see the things that I am
learning about; I like a framework on which to hang my book-learning.
And here, again, amateur astronomers are incredibly lucky. Nobody
will ever see an atom or an electron, but most of the subjects of
astronomy are sitting out there in plain view, just waiting for
someone to admire them and learn about them.
- Tony Flanders
Cambridge, MA
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Chris Willis
things. I'm sure we've all met people who acted like this had been done to
them, though...
Stanley L. Jensen
That's "taxidermy."
Chris Willis
Raycash
Your post was a delight to read!
Nothing else needs to be said except a heart-felt "thank you."
Excuse me now while I 'save to disk' and print your wonderful essay.
--Ray Cash
How to Build a Dobsonian Telescope:
http://members.aol.com/sfsidewalk/dobplans.htm
My Deep-Sky Page:
http://members.aol.com/anonglxy/deepsky.htm
How to Build a 13" "Travel Scope"
http://members.aol.com/radcash/travelscope.htm
Dominic-Luc Webb molmed
On Thu, 28 Jan 1999, Chris Willis wrote:
> Hey Tony, I'm confused. I thought "taxonomy" meant stuffing and preserving
> things. I'm sure we've all met people who acted like this had been done to
> them, though...
>
Actually, taxonomy is the sorting of species. I guess astronomers
come in different types and shapes and could be placed into
separate taxa if someone actually wanted to...
Cheers,
Dominic
North 59 37' 30"
East 17 48' 10"
_______________________________________
Dominic-Luc Webb, doktorande
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________________________________________
Warren Porter
If the criteria were established, this might be a suitable "cloudy
night" or "light polluted" night activity for those so inclined.
Warren
--
email address: wlpo...@erols.com
Tom Polakis
Tony Flanders. Not sure why you didn't go to S&T's "Focal Point" with this
one, Tony. One observation I've made about the occasional excellent and
original posts that appear on s.a.a. is that they seem to generate very few
replies, while somebody complaining about the content of the newsgroup or
arguing about superior equipment draws scores of replies.
Tom
Stuart Levy
Tom Polakis <pol...@sprintmail.com> wrote:
>If there were a "Best Post of the Month" award, I'd give it to this one by
>Tony Flanders.
Hear, hear! sci.astro readers knew you were a fine observer, Tony;
now we know you as a fine writer and clear thinker as well.
>Not sure why you didn't go to S&T's "Focal Point" with this
>one, Tony. One observation I've made about the occasional excellent and
>original posts that appear on s.a.a. is that they seem to generate very few
>replies, while somebody complaining about the content of the newsgroup or
>arguing about superior equipment draws scores of replies.
>
>Tom
>
Yes, I agree, and am sad to see it.
Maybe the explanation is something like this: no special skill or wisdom
or wit is needed to grumble -- anyone can feel comfortable in joining in.
But not many feel they can add anything, or improve anything, in replying
to a piece like this one, without looking small. It's hard to follow a
hard act to follow. But our (at least my) experience of this newsgroup,
and of astronomy altogether, is greatly enriched by this reading
this kind of thoughtful writing.
Stuart Levy, NCSA
sl...@ncsa.uiuc.edu
Messina
Stuart Levy wrote:
> In article <01be4cd6$9ca93600$a84d2599@desktop>,
> Tom Polakis <pol...@sprintmail.com> wrote:
> >If there were a "Best Post of the Month" award, I'd give it to this one by
> >Tony Flanders.
>
> Hey......what did I miss here.....could Tony repost this?
Raycash
>
Go to www.dejanews.com
Type in Tony Flanders...
Save to file; bookmark Deja News.
tfla...@my-dejanews.com
> One observation I've made about the occasional excellent and
> original posts that appear on s.a.a. is that they seem to generate very few
> replies, while somebody complaining about the content of the newsgroup or
> arguing about superior equipment draws scores of replies.
Stuart Levy responded:
> Yes, I agree, and am sad to see it.
No reason to feel sad about it. Some kinds of posts lend themselves to
replies, some don't. Equipment threads usually start out as questions,
and questions obviously demand replies. Statements don't.
I am sure you are also right about being a hard act to follow. Which partly
reflects my skill as a writer, but much more reflects the amount of effort
that I put into it. I spent several days writing it, and probably several
months organizing the ideas beforehand. Who is willing to put that much
effort into a response? Not I, not unless the issue is one that I care
deeply about and I am *sure* that I have something important to add.
Keith Burnett
In article <78q22q$d9g$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, tfla...@my-dejanews.com
writes
>Star Huggers
>------------
>
>At the opposite pole from the technocrat is the nature lover. Or is
>it really opposite? The two are flip sides of the same coin. Before
>the Industrial Revolution, there were no nature lovers; nature was
>just there, unremarkable, taken for granted.
Earlier in history, the link between the stars, the wandering stars and
the life of small communities was very strong, surely?
John North's book Stonehenge synthesises what might be known about a
3000 year culture who looked to the skies for meaning of some kind.
Cheers
--
Keith Burnett